The congregations remained almost as passive as the Roman Church. They have, in Europe, not even the right of electing their pastor. They are exclusively ruled by their ministers, as they are ruled by the provincial consistories, always presided over by a layman, the provincial consistory by a central consistory, and this again by the minister of worship and public instruction, who is the immediate organ of the ecclesiastical supremacy of the crown. Add to this infant baptism and infant membership, and then you have the world in the Church, and a state of things, if not so bad as that of Rome, yet as completely unlike the apostolic churches, and as wide a departure from what must result from surrender to the Bible alone and submission to Christ and his apostles as it were possible to reach. The Reformation in England was fraught with immense blessings to the world at large, the advantage of which the English people now enjoy. But in England’s so-called Protestant Church there is no trace of the three fundamental principles enunciated by the reformers: (1) The Bible the only rule of faith and practice. (2) The duty of every man to judge the Bible for himself. (3) The priesthood of every member of the Church. Instead of “the Bible only as the rule of faith and practice,” they have creeds and Parliamentary control of church services; in place of “the duty of every man to interpret the Bible for himself,” this same State Church has burned and hung Roman Catholics and Dissenters, the one for holding too much Romanism, and the other for not holding as much as the king and the clergy were pleased to demand. Then, in lieu of “the priesthood of every member,” there is a limited priesthood, differing but little from that of Rome; with infant baptism, infant membership, and numerous other human inventions “making void the commandments of God.” CHAPTER VI. THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND